China denounces US protectionism

Trade disputes between China and the US are escalating as Washington pushes ahead with more investigations against Chinese products. The Ministry of Commerce says China opposes abusive protectionism, and will take action to protect the interests of its domestic industries.

The US on Thursday imposed preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging up to 99 percent on Chinese-imported oil well pipes. It is the biggest US trade action against China. The anti-dumping duties were approved despite strong opposition from China, which says protectionism will only hinder normal trade between the countries.

Yao Jian, spokesman of Ministry of Commerce, said, "The oil well pipe case involves 3.2 billion US dollars export, mostly in the high end. It has a big impact on China's steel products export. The US denied China's market economy status and took discriminative measures to impose anti-dumping duties, bringing serious impacts to China's steel sector exports. China strongly opposes the abusive protectionism. We will take action to protect domestic enterprises. We will also conduct more negotiation with the US side. We hope the United States can get rid of the bias and admit China's market economy status soon to tackle the double standards thoroughly and give Chinese enterprises equal and fair treatment. Meanwhile we will support enterprises to explore market, and facilitate their trade activities."

The U.S. International Trade Commission also pushed ahead on Friday with two new investigations. The probes cover imports of glossy magazine-quality paper from China and Indonesia totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, as well as certain salts from China that are used in cleaning products, food additives and fertilizer.

In just a few months the Obama administration has initiated at least a dozen anti-dumping or countervailing duty investigations into Chinese products. Experts say the move might escalate trade disputes between the two countries.